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BEAMFORMING IS ONE of those concepts that seem so simple that you wonder why no one thought of them before. Instead of broadcasting a signal to a wide area, hoping to reach your intended target, why not concentrate the signal and aim it directly at the target? Sometimes the simplest concepts are the most difficult to execute, especially at retail prices. Fortunately, beamforming is finally becoming a common feature in 802.11ac Wi-Fi routers, at least at the high end. First, a bit of background: Beamforming was an optional feature of the older 802.11n wireless networking standard, but the IEEE (the international body that establishes these standards) didn’t spell out exactly how it was to be implemented. The router you bought might have employed one technique, but if the Wi-Fi adapter…

RECENT HEADLINES ABOUT shadowy government agencies and high-profile hack attacks drive home a crucial point: Your online privacy is best protected when you keep an iron grip on the information you’re handing out. If your personal info is on a server somewhere, it’s not truly yours. So many core aspects of our lives have shifted to the cloud, mostly to our great benefit. Every gain in convenience, however, comes with a loss of control, and that loss of control all too often comes bundled with privacy or security woes. You can take some simple precautions to minimize the amount of personal information that you have online. But before we get started, remember that this data checkup is about what you’re comfortable with. If nothing else, this article can help you…

ENAMORED BY WI-FI’S CONVENIENCE, we tend to be blind to its risks. Many routers are riddled with security holes that leave your data exposed to enterprising hackers and other intruders. And if you run a business, the jeopardy is even greater. To keep your wireless network secure, follow these eight security tips. 1. Change the default password If you didn’t do it when you set up your router, immediately change its default password. The default passwords for all vendors of network equipment are widely known and just a quick search away. (For more on wireless network setup, see go.pcworld.com/wifisetup.) 2. Use only WPA2 encryption The unidirectional nature of Wi-Fi signals necessitates the use of encryption to prevent neighbors or malicious parties from spying on your online activities. Even though the…

MOST GAMERS PREFER huge, liquid-cooled, multiple-graphics-card-laden desktops over laptops. But sometimes you need a machine that’s as portable as it is powerful, and that’s where Origin’s EON17-S (go.pcworld.com/origin17s) comes into play. This hulking desktop-replacement system is pretty sexy, considering it’s an 11.25-pound monster. And that’s without the 2-pound power brick you won’t be able to ditch, because the EON17-S gets only 2 hours of battery life on a single charge. Our fully loaded review configuration will set you back $3760. That’s actually not a bad price for a system with a fourth-generation Intel Core i7-4930MX Extreme Edition processor, 16GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, a discrete Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M graphics card, a 240GB solid-state drive, and a 750GB hard drive that spins at 7200 rpm. The EON17-S also features a Blu-ray…

THE EPSON EXPRESSION XP-810 Small-in-One (go.pcworld.com/epsonxp810) printer could make almost anyone happy. It has an impressively deep list of features for a home printer and is also one of the best all-around performers in its price range. Here’s the big catch: ink costs. This is officially a $230 printer (as of November)—though you should be able to shop around for a better price, and Epson is currently discounting it on its own site. However, if I’m spending that much, I expect to be repaid with lower ink prices. Instead, the costs are a little higher than average: 4.6 or 5.2 cents per page for black, and 13.4 or 18.2 cpp for a four-color page, using the high-capacity or standard-size cartridges, respectively. I had the same complaint about ink costs recently…

TABLETS ARE WELL on the way to outselling notebooks. But while the Windows 8 user interface makes it possible to navigate the operating system with just a fingertip, that doesn’t make all your old programs magically finger-friendly. For some things, you just need a keyboard. A new class of hybrid PCs combines a wafer-thin slate for watching movies, reading, and Web surfing with a detachable keyboard to use with full-blown programs that work best with physical input devices. I spent several weeks using two hybrids that run Windows 8—the Asus Transformer Book T100 and Lenovo’s Miix 10—to see if they deliver on the promise of providing the flexibility of a tablet with the productivity of a laptop. I read, watched, and wrote while wrangling a very active toddler. I used…

GIFs ARE THE twitchy, loopy language of the modern Web. So it stands to reason that when you’ve discovered a GIF capable of expressing the real deep-down you, you’ll want to share it with others. But sometimes those pieces of bitmapped magic need a little tweaking before they’re ready for prime time in an email or on Tumblr. Various programs and apps will allow you to create your own GIF goodness (go.pcworld.com/giftools), but if you ever need to make a quick fix on an existing GIF, you’ll be interested to know that EzGIF (ezgif.com) is a free one-stop shop for doing just that. The site offers a straightforward GIF tool belt for cropping, resizing, optimizing, and otherwise fixing a GIF—without needing to buy any software or have any graphics training.…

MICROSOFT’S INTERNET EXPLORER 11 for Windows 7 provides a nominal speed boost over IE 10, and includes performance-enhancing technologies such as prerendering and prefetching. Although users can download a copy of IE 11 for Windows 7 from the Microsoft website (go.pcworld.com/iedownload), the company is also sending out the upgrade through automatic updates. Overall, Microsoft claims, users will see a 9 percent performance improvement versus IE 10, and performance that’s about 30 percent faster than rival browsers. IE 11 ships with the new Chakra just-in-time Java compiler, which is designed to improve the performance of websites, plus support for components of the ECMAScript6 standard. IE 11 offloads WebGL graphics processing onto the GPU, reducing CPU power consumption and improving performance. Microsoft has improved the browser’s compliance with Web standards, too, including…

GOOGLE AND HP recently yanked the HP Chromebook 11 (go.pcworld.com/chromebook11) from store shelves, roughly a month after the laptop launched. The laptop disappeared from Amazon, too, as well as from HP and Google’s own Web stores. The reason: The Micro-USB charger that shipped with the HP Chromebook 11 is faulty, and some of the charging units have been damaged from overheating during use. Following is the full text of what Google public relations passed along when PCWorld asked for a comment from Caesar Sengupta, vice president of product management: “Google and HP are pausing sales of the HP Chromebook 11 after receiving a small number of user reports that some chargers included with the device have been damaged due to overheating during use. We are working with the Consumer Product…

YOUR LAPTOP IS your pride and joy. It’s your umbilical cord to the office. It’s your entertainment at the airport and on the plane. You bring it everywhere you go. But there are all too many ways that it can come to harm. Follow these tips for laptop safety and security, and you won’t have to worry while you and your notebook are on the road. 1. Keep it padded Traveling is full of shoving bags into tight spots, jostling them about, and stuffing in just one more thing. Push a little too hard, however, and you may hear an investment-shattering crack. Buy a laptop-specific carrying case with plenty of padding and protection. Separate compartments for accessories and power cables are a luxury that can keep your PC scratch-and dent-free.…

MICROSOFT IS MUCH more than the Windows operating system. The company offers an array of services that address some of the most common headaches small businesses face and enable them to operate like much bigger organizations. Here are five of those gems. 1. Office 365 You can buy Office 365 Small Business Premium for only $150 per user per year. That’s less than the cost of a single Office Professional 2013 license (go.pcworld.com/office2013pro), but it allows you to install the full Office Professional 2013 suite on up to five devices—including iPhones and Android smartphones. Office 365 (go.pcworld.com/office365sbp), though, is more than Microsoft Office in the cloud. Office 365 Small Business Premium includes Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync, which together give you a complete business infrastructure without the cost and overhead of…

IT’S AMAZING HOW quickly you can become accustomed to a touchscreen user interface. If you currently use Windows 8, you’ve probably experienced this phenomenon in the form of reflexively swiping your finger across your desktop monitor at least once—to no effect, if it isn’t a touchscreen. Fortunately, affordable touchscreen displays are finally making their way into the market. I recently spent some time with two such models: the Dell P2314T Touch Monitor (go.pcworld.com/p2314t) and the Samsung S24C770T 10-point Touch Monitor (go.pcworld.com/s24c770t). One is definitely better than the other. The Dell P2314T is a 23-inch display based on an IPS (In-Plane Switching) panel, and the Samsung S24C770T is a 24-inch model based on MVA (Multi-domain Vertical Alignment) technology. Both use LED backlights and deliver a native resolution of 1920 by 1080…

WITH TABLETS AND ultraportables garnering so much attention, you might not have noticed how thin and light desktop replacements have become. You’ll need an extra-tall backpack to accommodate the Toshiba Satellite P75-A7200 (go.pcworld.com/toshibap75) with its 17.3-inch display, but this machine actually weighs two ounces less than Dell’s Latitude E6540 (go.pcworld.com/dellE6540), which has only a 15.5-inch screen. Okay, so 7.5 pounds with the AC adapter won’t win over any MacBook Air fans. But for many, this laptop’s extra screen real estate, super-comfortable keyboard, and second hard drive bay will make it worthwhile to tote around a couple of extra pounds. The Satellite P75-A7200 houses Intel’s fully threaded quad-core Core i7-4700QM CPU feeding off of 8MB of DDR3/1600 memory. The hard drive is a 750GB, 5400-rpm unit that delivers capacity, but not…

DON’T LOOK NOW, but Sony has quietly released a new smartwatch, and I’m almost surprised to report that it’s not a total disaster. Compared with Samsung’s widely criticized Galaxy Gear (go.pcworld.com/galaxygear), Sony’s SmartWatch 2 doesn’t overreach with a zillion half-baked features. So it might restore some credibility to the smartwatch category. You strap the SmartWatch 2 on your wrist and use it to check notifications of who’s emailing, texting, or calling you. It offers few thrills but imposes less pain than its competition. Smartphone support for (nearly) all First, I need to clarify three big differences between the SmartWatch 2 and the Galaxy Gear. The SmartWatch 2 works with any phone running Android 4.0 or later—important because both watches depend on smartphones for key functions. It offers better battery life:…

WINDOWS IS SO CUSTOMIZABLE that you have endless opportunities to tinker. Don’t like Internet Explorer’s default feel? Change the settings! Hate the way Windows 8’s Ribbon UI looks? Tweak away! And if you’re feeling truly adventurous, you can make a multitude of personalized alterations within the easy-to-bork Windows Registry. Unfortunately, all that freedom has a dangerous downside: You can really mess things up—including some vital things. But don’t abandon your dreams of total customization. Microsoft has built a slew of granular controls into Windows that let you reset all sorts of operating-system features. And usually you won’t have to resort to using a “clean install” sledgehammer to obliterate an irritating fly! Read this before you decide to pound your installation into the ground and start all over. Revert to default…

Q: RAY RAULERSON asked about running a computer with two monitors. A: FOR YEARS, I was quite happy with one monitor. When I saw other people working with two monitors, the arrangement struck me as a waste of desk space and electricity. A three-monitor setup looked as if it were about to flap its wings and fly away. Then, one day, on a whim, as I was working with my closed laptop in its docking bay and my eyes on my external monitor, I opened the laptop for a second screen—and I loved it. Though your graphics subsystem can probably handle two screens, the issues for desktops and laptops differ. Desktops: The vast majority of modern graphic cards for desktop PCs support two or more monitors. Your motherboard’s built-in…

FEW THINGS IN computing are as vital as the lowly hard drive. If your computer’s memory goes bad or its processor blows up, switching out the dead component is easy enough; when a hard drive gives up the ghost, your precious files expire along with it. Just how long do hard drives last? We now have a semblance of an answer thanks to the BackBlaze cloud-storage service. BackBlaze employs more than 25,000 consumer-grade hard drives to back up its customers’ data, and the service recently released a comprehensive report (go.pcworld.com/backblazereport) on the life span of those hard drives over a four-year period. Life comes in waves Let’s get the big reveal out of the way: Only 26 percent of BackBlaze’s drives failed during the four-year testing period. That’s not too…

1 Asus Xonar Essence STU go.pcworld.com/xonarstu The Xonar Essence ST and STX have long been the go-to sound cards for audiophiles. Now the Xonar Essence STU offers the same impressive audio in a digital-to-analog converter, with easy-to-reach controls and a minimalist casing. If you use high-end headphones, you owe it to your ears to pick up one of these DACs. 2 SteelSeries H Wireless go.pcworld.com/steelh With the same drivers as the phenomenal SteelSeries Siberia Elite, the H Wireless is a great-sounding gaming headset. It’s not quite as sleek or sculpted as the Elite, but that might appeal to a certain crowd. It’s also wireless, so you can use it from the comfort of your couch. 3 Razer Taipan eSports Edition—Evil Geniuses go.pcworld.com/geniuses This Razer mouse, created in conjunction with the…

WITH THE REVELATION that the National Security Agency may have been involved in everything from spying on U.S. residents to cracking online encryption to collecting global financial data, computer privacy has taken on all the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of a John le Carré novel. We went right to the experts—the NSA itself—and pored over the agency’s security tips and recommendations (go.pcworld.com/nsatips) for its Department of Defense and intelligence-community customers. From there, we identified seven simple measures that you can easily implement to protect yourself from hackers and cybercriminals—and perhaps even from the NSA. Enable automatic software updates Good security starts with the basics, of course, and nothing is more basic than keeping your operating system current. So it’s no surprise that the NSA recommends enabling automatic updates in Windows. Navigate to…

IN TODAY’S ULTRABOOK- and MacBook Air–obsessed world, you’d be forgiven for thinking that hulking desktop replacements are passé. But Asus’s Republic of Gamers G750JH (go.pcworld.com/g750jh) is ready to prove you wrong. The G750JH earned a mark of 435 on our WorldBench 8.1 test suite, coming in more than four times as fast as our baseline model, an Asus VivoBook S550CA. It’s the second-fastest laptop we’ve tested, losing only to the similarly equipped Micro Express NB5720 gaming machine. That ultrafast performance is attributable in part to the laptop’s powerful components, which include a fourth-generation Intel Core i7-4700HQ processor, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, and Nvidia’s best mobile graphics processor, the GeForce GTX 780M. A 256GB solid-state drive helps it start up in 7.3 seconds. That’s crazy-fast for a gaming laptop—the NB5720 takes…

WESTERN DIGITAL’ My Cloud EX4 (go.pcworld.com/ex4) offers all of the user-friendly features of the original My Cloud, packed in a metal four-bay enclosure that boasts a number of high-end perks the My Cloud does not. First and foremost is RAID support, specifically RAID 5 if you purchase the device prepopulated with drives. The unit we tested came from the factory with four 2TB drives in RAID 5, which means any one of the four drives could fail and you would still be able to recover all your data. Because the drives are hot-swappable, you can yank out the failed drive and replace it with a new one, and the EX4 will automatically rebuild the array without any downtime. The balance of the EX4’s feature set will appeal to consumer and…

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED in a smaller tablet, you might be looking straight at Google’s updated Nexus 7 (go.pcworld.com/2013nexus7) or Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HDX (go.pcworld.com/kindlefirehdx). These tablets lead the 7-inch pack. Aside from a black chassis, they are nothing alike—and choosing between them is a challenge because their features and software ecosystems are worlds apart. Design The 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX is smaller than last year’s Fire HD, and more compact than the Nexus 7. Its smaller size leaves a bit of extra room in your bag, and it’s easy to use one-handed. The HDX is noticeably heavier than the Nexus 7, however, and the volume and power buttons are awkwardly placed on the back. The Nexus 7’s recessed buttons are no better, though. Winner: Tie. Both are stylish-looking devices…

It’s the little things that count. And that’s definitely the case with Windows 8.1. Even after covering the operating system update’s best new features (go.pcworld.com/81best), its five most compelling improvements (go.pcworld.com/81compelling), and its most intriguing secrets (go.pcworld.com/81secrets), we’ve found that it still holds plenty to discover. And the OS doesn’t actively point you to some of the cooler things it has on tap. No more! Discover a universe of hidden extras that range from the mundane to the mind-blowing. You could spend hours scrounging for them all—or you could just read this article. Enjoy. Look, Ma, no hands One of Windows 8.1’s coolest tricks is buried deep in the new Food & Drink app. The app is chock-full of recipes for all sorts of delectable goodies, but touchscreens and foodstuffs…

THE “LAPTOP KILLER” of tablets has yet to emerge, but you can configure a powerful enough slate to let you retire your laptop. Microsoft’s Surface 2 (go.pcworld.com/surface2rev) and Surface Pro 2 (go.pcworld.com/surfacepro2) tablets work natively with the Office productivity suite, which comes free with every Surface 2 and is also available for the Surface Pro 2. Both have roomy, 10.6-inch displays. Add a Touch or Type Cover, and you have a fine hybrid device. People who own iOS and Android tablets have other productivity options, aside from Office. If you equip your tablet with the right apps and accessories, it just might replace a conventional laptop. Pick your tablet Two great tablet choices are Apple’s iPad and Google’s Nexus 10 (go.pcworld.com/nexus10). The latter has a slightly larger screen, built-in near-field…

IF YOUR ONCE-FAST computer has slowed to a crawl, you shouldn’t blame the hardware. Though you may be able to improve its speed by adding RAM, upgrading its CPU, or replacing its hard drive with an SSD, none of those responses addresses the underlying problem. Your hardware isn’t underpowered—it’s overloaded. Cleaning Windows will likely speed up your PC, without your having to reinstall the operating system. Less drastic fixes are available. Look for hog processes: Your computer may be running a poorly written process that hogs a lot of resources. To find out, right-click the taskbar and select Start Task Manager. Click the Processes tab and then the CPU column header. The top items in the list are the ones making the heaviest demands on the CPU. If you see…